This plan represents a pivotal opportunity to fundamentally reimagine how we approach health in the 21st century. For too long, healthcare has been reactionary - waiting for people to become ill before we intervene. The rising tide of preventable conditions, widening health inequalities, and increasing pressure on our healthcare system demands exactly the kind of revolutionary thinking outlined in this strategy.
The 10-year plan commits to shifting ‘from sickness to prevention’ with ambitious goals including halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between rich and poor regions, raising the healthiest generation of children ever, and creating a new genomics population health service accessible to all by the end of the decade.
These align directly with evidence-based approaches we have developed through collaborative work across South Yorkshire and beyond, demonstrating how these shifts can transform lives while delivering clear economic benefits.
Through partnerships across the region, we are already delivering the Government's vision for neighbourhood health centres that keep people well. The National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine (NCSEM) in Sheffield exemplifies how co-locating healthcare services within community spaces can increase physical activity participation while making healthcare more accessible to those who need it most. To date, our work has helped facilitate over 120,000 community-based clinical appointments annually in settings closer to where people live, with nearly half of referrals coming from the most deprived communities.
The NCSEM sites also act as community hubs for the delivery of our Active Together cancer prehabilitation programme. Active Together provides exercise, nutrition and psychological support for people with a cancer diagnosis before, during and after treatment, and the programme has observed a 10% increase in one-year survival rates (compared to those who chose to decline the service) while generating estimated net savings to the NHS of £366 per patient.
Ï㽶ÊÓƵ’s research into social prescribing demonstrates how connecting people with community-based activities can deliver social and economic value, while improving both physical and mental health outcomes. The plan's commitment to establishing a neighbourhood health centre in every community, beginning with places where healthy life expectancy is lowest, and ensuring these centres operate at least 12 hours a day, six days a week, directly validates our community-based approach.
The digital innovation emphasis also aligns with our work through the South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub. This community resource demonstrates how underutilised data from daily life, such as wearable technology, can lead to healthier lives and earlier intervention when integrated with routine healthcare records. The plan's vision to make the NHS “the most artificial-intelligence-enabled care system in the world” and transform the NHS App into a “world leading tool for patient access” by 2028 supports our evidence that technology can enable more personalised, predictive interventions.
We must fundamentally shift our perspective to see movement and physical activity not as optional extras but as essential aspects of everyday life that are accessible to all. For this shift to succeed, healthcare professionals will need the skills and confidence to support patients into a more active future.
The Physical Activity Clinical Champions programme has equipped over 58,000 healthcare workers with these essential skills through peer-led training, transforming how they integrate movement into patient care. The plan's recognition that “every single member of NHS staff” needs personalised career coaching and development, and its commitment to overhauling education and training curricula over the next three years, creates the perfect opportunity to embed physical activity promotion as a core competency.
The stark reality remains that your postcode still largely determines your health outcomes - an injustice that has no place in a modern UK. The plan explicitly recognises that people “in working class jobs, who are from ethnic minority backgrounds, who live in rural or coastal areas or deindustrialised inner cities” experience worse NHS access and outcomes, and commits to designing the reimagined NHS “to tackle inequalities in both access and outcomes.” This offers genuine hope that we can begin to address these fundamental inequalities through systematic, community-led change.
However, the real test will be in implementation. We need sustained commitment to community-led approaches, substantial investment in prevention infrastructure, and recognition that the biggest barriers to better health often lie in systems that make healthy choices difficult for those living in the poorest communities. The plan must ensure interventions reach all populations while concentrating efforts on those facing the greatest health inequalities. With the plan's commitment to delivering shifts in investment over the next three to four years as local areas build neighbourhood health services, and its goal for high autonomy to be the norm across every part of the country within 10 years, there is a clear pathway for systematic transformation.
The AWRC stands ready to support the Government in delivering this transformation. Our recent policy paper, Delivering the Prevention Legacy for the NHS: Innovations that Help People Move, lays out in greater detail our vision for how prevention can be embedded at the heart of healthcare delivery. Through our unique position - combining academic expertise, industry partnerships, and deep community engagement - we can provide evidence-based guidance, share best practices from successful regional programmes, and help design effective solutions for different contexts.
The vision outlined in this plan is both ambitious and achievable. Through collaborative work across South Yorkshire, we've demonstrated how this transformation is possible. Together, we can create a healthcare system that doesn't just treat illness but purposefully promotes health - a system that serves all communities equally and builds a healthier, more active future for generations to come.
We invite policymakers, healthcare leaders, and stakeholders to visit the AWRC at Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park to witness firsthand how these transformative approaches are already working. For those interested in collaboration or learning more about implementing these evidence-based solutions, we welcome the opportunity to share our expertise and experience.
Professor Rob Copeland,
Director of the Advanced Wellbeing Ï㽶ÊÓƵ Centre at Ï㽶ÊÓƵ
